Daddy, what did you do during the First World Infowar? As the question of whether WikiLeaks' Julian Assange is a hero or villain moves from front page headlines to talk shows and the blogosphere, another big story is emerging.
Unlike the quickly suppressed Twitter linked student revolt in Iran in 2009 following the disputed presidential election, the move by supporters to avenge attacks on Assange has gone viral. The rapid duplication of WikiLeaks content over the past weekend from one to more than 208 mirror websites represents a global counter-force that is now worldwide. Around the globe, it has become a call to arms for a far flung team of anonymous hackers.
Taking place in cyberspace, it exposes a whole new battlefield for the US government. A "clean-tech" war, it is taking place far beyond the sand and dust of Iraq and Afghanistan which already has immobilized billions of dollars worth of the military's engines, and electronics.
Yet this emerging Infowar is more than a multiplication of mirror websites. Operation Avenge Assange marks a power shift, an abrupt shift of power from those who hold power through secrecy, closed door diplomacy, or fear, toward those who favor transparency.
This shift to openness and transparency, declares Jeff Jarvis, author of Public Parts, and What Would Google Do?, is actually a shift from those who hold secrets to those who create openness. That is our emerging reality.
Even more real is the fact that what may be termed the world's first Infowar has now entered the realm of online gamers. With the line between government secrecy and public transparency beginning to blur, those whose lives are plugged into the Internet are starting to feel a surge of power.
This shift of power to openness and transparency is occurring right under their fingertips, on the keyboard, and on the screen. To them, power is clarity.
"The first serious Infowar is now engaged," warns cyberlibertarian John Perry Barlow, a founding member of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, and former lyricist for the Grateful Dead. To the anonymous hackers and others who follow him on Twitter and in blogs, he reminds: "The field of Battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."
And the troops are gathering. The worse it gets, the more empowered they seem. As a message on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed reminded: "Cut us down and the stronger we become."
Hour by hour, as authorities seek to disable Julian Assange's financial lifelines, as threats against his life stir the airwaves, an invisible cyber counter-force shows how quickly a globally connected network of computer savvy individuals can innovate when one of their members is threatened.
Interestingly, almost forgotten in this cyber game of hide and seek, is the content of the diplomatic cables.
However, to those who fear the release of more information, this time about the financial markets and Wall Street, 39-year-old Assange has threatened that he will unleash a "thermonuclear device" of completely unexpurgated government files if he is forced to appear before authorities.
Unlike Biblical David who felled Goliath with a slingshot and single stone, Julian Assange's weapon of choice is a 256-bit encryption key. He refers to this as his "insurance policy."
Shifts happen. What appears to be happening "overnight" has been more than 30-years in the making. Unknowingly, the computer industry has delivered on its promise of unlimited power to the individual.
Powering up, WikiLeaks computer-linked troops may be giving the world a look at the future of war.
Follow Alexia Parks on Twitter: www.twitter.com/alexiaparks
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Too bad Wikileaks site has been down, because i'm not seen it
Some types of insurance
I sense that the uploading to supporters speaks volumes.
I suggest we get a handle on our own national darkness. That part of our national psyche that is all turned around. That's all these cables show, our 'secrets.' If we out ourselves, no one can do it for us.
Privacy? Gathering personal info on UN Diplomats? On Americans through phones/email/internet? Corporations for anything they want access? Something about this situation tells me that we started the game.
Look at the way he gets arrested. For having sex without a condom with two women he was dating at the same time? Come on. Is symbolic. Like creating Net Neutrality with no neutrality. Calling something compromise that is selling the farm. Or holding grudges against baseball players who leave a team but not those officials that sanction the breaking of international laws on torture.
I have not come to a conclusion about this entire event as I am still only just learning about it, and, the ramifications. I remember feeling mad to have our secrets out there, but honestly, if we are making deals behind people's backs and calling people names - what kind of diplomatic work is being promoted by our country, regardless of who is in charge?
These are a lot of the questions that are sparked, and a sense that this situation is about to change our world forever.
The heart of the matter here is not secrecy or transparency, but a direct struggle for power.
If the author above were to apply this idea that "transparency is good" to the case of Phil Zimmerman and PGP, she would have been siding with the FBI. Would this viewpoint been as praiseworthy then? I suggest that this shows it's not the method at hand, but a direct power grab in the realm of information that's what's happening.
The argument that transparency is good brought us the V-chip, Clipper, a Supreme Court decision that limits the intensity of math that can be applied lawfully in code: in and of itself, it is just as much of an imbalanced and ineffective argument as the idea that we should all conceal everything.
Notice, for example, who is witholding what in these trials and power grabs. Assange, while publicly advocating transparency, seeks to limit the release of his own information. No fingerprints and no DNA, but plenty of extortion and blackmail for getting his way.
Getting your way when you feel powerless is what a lot of this bickering is really about.
A private person, on the other hand, is not a product of their government. By holding citizenship they agree to abide by a certain set of laws and in exchange are guaranteed a set of rights (notably not a discrete set in the case of the US), one of which is privacy. PGP is a tool which guarantees privacy, and is therefore in accordance with our civil rights.
However, the Zimmerman case was not about privacy, but about the WWII-era classification of encryption as a weapon. This made the case about the government's ability to control weapons export vs a citizen's right to publish speech (and whether or not code counts as speech).
DemocracyNow.org is following this story with excellent coverage from Assange's lawyers, constitutional lawyers, and other authorities on just how trumped up the corporate media's lying to the public is. They've put Fox and Beck to shame with their crap from Lauer and Couric and others.
What the long-range consequences will be is unclear. At the moment, the initial reaction by many governments is to blame a lack of security and to push for greater secrecy in protecting classified information. One problem with this is that there will always be the grunts who carry out these war crimes who have little incentive to keep quiet. The more you threaten people with charges of treason and jail time, the more they will want to leak the information. As long as there are websites willing to publish the information, there will be whistelblowers willing to upload it.
In talking to the pre-internet generation, I've notice their arguments fail to encompass the one critical thing that makes this different from some doc drop in 1911...the internet. They fail to recognize its importance because it has very little impact on their lives. I'm pretty sure most world leaders underestimate the internet as well.
Every day, I talk online to people in Australia, Canada, Denmark, the UK, Germany, as well as across the US. This fosters a sense of community that transcends lines drawn in the dirt by governments. A growing number of people are identifying with their online communities rather than the nation they were born in.
As government decisions continue to ignore the will of the people who put them in power, this phenomenon will grow and thrive. Netizens of the world are united and talking.
And a lot of them are sitting on Julian Assange's "insurance package."
"You know how Julian Assange is the only name anyone knows? That's deliberate."
IOW, Julian is willing to take one for the team, but this isn't over. Not by a long shot.
Also, all hail Anonymous! Fighting to keep information free, so you don't have to!